


Suddenly There's An Old Friend From The Past

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, Frottage, M/M, Oral Sex, Towels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:03:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I tell you fifty times a day all the things that are wrong with you. Do you think I would stop at this point?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suddenly There's An Old Friend From The Past

1.

 

Newt was thankful that Hermann was the one who slammed _him_ into the wall and kissed him sloppily. All the excitement and adrenaline had him really hoping that there would be some slamming-into-walls-and-sloppy-kissing, but he didn't want to be the one to try initiating it, for fear of rejection.

Now Hermann had him pinned, and their breath came in loud sobs and their bloody, tissue-stuffed noses bumped together. To any casual observer, they appeared to be making an honest effort to eat each other's faces.

Newt looked around, just briefly, to see if anyone was indeed watching them, but he was fairly certain they were alone; everyone was in the Jaeger bay, partying under the stopped War Clock, getting wrecked on any mind-altering substances they happened to possess, colliding awkwardly at high speed and calling it “celebratory dancing.”

As far as Newt was concerned, they could have it. In particular, they could have it in that other room, far away from the grimy corridor where he and Hermann were now getting each other's dicks out.

Newt moaned as his hand finally closed around Hermann's erection. “Oh God, you're so sexy,” he whimpered. “I'm not just saying that ‘cause my brain's all scrambled. I thought you were sexy for a long time. I used to jerk it to your letters – oh shit, I swore I'd never tell you that–”

“For God's sake,” Hermann said between gasps, the revelation putting a hitch in the already unsteady rhythm of his fist, “why did you never say anything?”

“Because I thought you'd hit me!”

“I'm going to hit you right now for being such an imbecile!” Hermann sighed. “Oh, who am I kidding, I’ll do nothing of the kind. Just kiss me, you idiot.”

“Yeah, I will, I fucking wi— _mmmph_.”

Hermann's forceful kisses sent bolts of pleasure straight to Newt's dick, which Hermann continued to stroke erratically but with purpose. Newt could already feel his orgasm approaching, but he wanted to wait, and finish at the same time Hermann did. It would be the perfect punctuation mark at the end of their shared experience today. “I'm close,” he said into Hermann's mouth. “Are you close? Let's do it together.”

“Uh...” Hermann said.

Newt shuddered under Hermann's touch and came all over those long, graceless fingers. With a great heaving sigh, he leaned back against the wall and loosened his grip on Hermann's erection...Only then did he notice that Hermann still _had_ an erection. “Oh shit,” Newt said, “sorry, I thought you were gonna come too. Here, I can finish you off, hold on...”

Hermann was groaning in response to Newt's increasingly frantic strokes, but in a strained, vexed way that didn't sound anything like the brink of orgasm. Newt was not deterred. “What do you need, dude? Tell me what you need.”

But Hermann was unable to articulate an answer. Newt had moved from enthusiasm to determination, and was now on his way to frustration, and Hermann felt every bit of it, as it traveled from Newt's brain down his arm and through his hand.

Hermann placed his hand over Newt's, putting a halt to the frenzied effort. “Listen, don't...don't worry about it.” When Newt persisted, Hermann snapped, “Stop. Please. It's been quite a day, that's all. Right now I would be happy just to have a shower and go to bed. With you, of course,” he added, when Newt looked to him anxiously.

 

 

2.

 

Hermann was going to be so proud. He was going to come home thinking he’d need to do the laundry before he could relax, but – _skapow!_ – the laundry was going to already be done, because Newt had done it! Aw, yeah. First time for everything. Newt made up a little song as he gathered up his stray socks from each room, _Do-do-do-doing the laundry, like a boss, gonna make Hermann happy, do-do-doing the laundry_...

As he dumped the full hamper from the bathroom into the washing machine, he saw something tumble out that he had never seen before. In amongst all their white towels – purchased when they had moved in together three months ago – was a smaller towel, frayed and ratty, in a shade of green that suggested it had been produced in the 1970s. Newt had never seen it before. But whatever. He shrugged and closed the lid.

When it came out of the dryer ninety minutes later, he didn't know where it belonged, so he folded it up and put it on the bathroom counter, trusting that Hermann, a responsible adult, would return it to its proper place. He didn't see it again after that.

 

3.

 

The whole thing began, as it always did, with eagerness on Newt's part and hope on Hermann's.

Newt put a big “X” through the 27th on the calendar on the wall in his office. It was the fourteenth and final “X,” and it meant that it was time to go home and bring Hermann to orgasm. God willing. He had not been able to accomplish this all the time they'd been together. They had tried several things already – various techniques, positions, and toys – but none of them had proved successful. Hermann had explained that he was able to come when he masturbated, though he refused to do this in front of Newt for some reason. But it inspired Newt to suggest that perhaps if they did not have sex for two weeks, and Hermann did not masturbate for those two weeks, then he might get sufficiently pent-up to facilitate orgasm when they resumed.

Thus commenced two weeks of Newt regretting that he ever came up with the idea of not having sex for two weeks. _Zero out of ten, would not recommend NOT having sex with your hot boyfriend_ , he thought. But he saw it through in the hopes that it would help them find a solution to Hermann's problem.

Hermann arrived home shortly after Newt, with a sheepish expression that told Newt that Hermann also had a calendar in his office upon which he’d carefully drawn the last “X” today. Newt pounced on him the minute he walked in, but Hermann insisted they have a proper dinner first; amorous activities were rarely improved by an empty stomach, he said, though Newt noticed that he did hurry through the meal, and was amenable when Newt suggested they skip dessert.

“Let me take the first shift,” Hermann said, his euphemistic way of offering to give Newt oral. He usually did it first, because he said (insisted) that sucking Newt off aroused him. Kneeling was hard on him, so he sat on the edge of the bed while Newt stood before him.

Just before Hermann leaned in to begin, Newt put his hand in Hermann’s hair and playfully mussed it up. It was something he did often, because the sight of Hermann’s hair askew reminded him fondly of that night in the Shatterdome, and those first frantic, disheveled fumblings.

It did not take long at all before Newt was spilling over Hermann's tongue, while Hermann slowly stroked himself. Newt leaned down to give Hermann a thank-you kiss before getting on his knees. Hermann remained in the same place where he'd serviced Newt to be serviced himself.

Never one to be accused of being patient, Newt barely teased Hermann with his tongue before taking him entirely, his throat tightening around the tip as he reached his limit. Not long after he had Hermann fully seated inside, the saliva began to flow. The first time Newt had done this, he'd swallowed all of his saliva, because he thought Hermann would appreciate keeping things tidy. But when that technique had failed to bring Hermann off, Newt went the other route, letting the spit spill all over, so the whole situation got sloppy and made obscene noises. Hermann seemed to like that better, though it never had produced the desired result.

Newt stroked the insides of Hermann's thighs, cupped and fondled his balls, did whatever he could to tease every sensation out of his body. Hermann leaned back, let himself writhe and heave and moan and mewl, and once again Newt’s heart raced with the thought that this time would be it. This was the time that he would finally be able to tip Hermann over the edge, show him a true ecstasy for which he would be eternally grateful, and think of whenever he needed to forgive Newt’s other faults.

But as Newt returned to awareness, after this reverie of driving Hermann to the very heights of sensual pleasure, he realized that his jaw ached, his lips were chapped, and Hermann still hadn’t come.

Hermann, meanwhile, had been perfectly aware the entire time that thirty minutes of increasing frustration had gone by. He drew his still-hard prick from Newt's mouth and said, “It feels so good. I'm really very sorry.”

Newt looked up at Hermann in despair and said, “You can come when you jerk off, right? Just do that. Just jerk off into my mouth. Please, I just want you to come.”

Hermann recoiled at these words. “No, I don’t want to do it that way.”

Newt slumped down and picked at the carpet a little as he said despondently, “You'd tell me if it were something wrong with me, wouldn't you?”

It was such a pitiful sight. Hermann leaned forward to clasp Newt's shoulders and haul him onto the bed. As they shifted around to lie beside each other, Hermann said, “I tell you fifty times a day all the things that are wrong with you. Do you think I would stop at this point?”

This did not console Newt, who stared at the ceiling and hated himself for being useless.

 

4.

 

Hermann was already uncomfortable, sitting in this noisy cafe full of people when they could have easily taken their drinks to go. But now he had to look away each time Newt took a sip of his bubble tea. Even just to watch someone drinking something through a straw, and then chewing immediately afterward, was disconcerting to him. Hermann was enjoying the fruity sweetness of his own drink, but when he finished it and set the cup down, every single tapioca pearl was still sitting at the bottom.

Newt picked up Hermann's abandoned cup and shook it, disapproving of what he saw. “Why didn't you eat the tapioca, dude? That's the best part!”

“I don't like it,” Hermann said.

“But they're sweet. You like sweet things.”

“I'm sure they are, but it's not the taste. It's the texture. I can't stand even the thought of drinking something and then suddenly having something solid pop into my mouth.” Just saying it out loud made Hermann shudder.

Newt pondered this. “But if you're expecting it, I mean, if it's the whole point that it’s like that...”

“It doesn't matter,” Hermann snapped. “I'm just very particular about textures. It's not a crime.”

“Nah, man, I get it, I guess. I think everyone has a thing about textures to some extent.” Newt stared into the middle distance for a moment, then chuckled. “When I was in college, I bought this hoodie at the student store, and the tag said it was 'California fleece,' and I had no idea what that meant, but I got it home and put it on, and it was the softest thing I had ever felt. It was like I was wearing a cloud, for real. And it was all rubbing against my nipples–”

“Would you keep your voice down!”

“Sorry.” Newt turned around. “Sorry everyone. Okay so anyway, that hoodie made me so horny, I had to take it off and turn it inside-out and jerk off with it. Just to see what it felt like. And after that, holy shit, I couldn't even look at it anymore, it was too weird. It just sat in a drawer for years. I didn't dare try wearing it again, and I couldn't give it away, 'cause I had jerked off with it once, so that would be messed up. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, I understand if you have a thing about–” Newt paused abruptly, having just had a moment of realization. He suddenly knew, and he looked at Hermann, searching for any sign in his face that he knew that Newt knew. But he found nothing.

“...textures,” he finished lamely.

 

5.

 

Hermann was taking his folded pajamas out of the bureau drawer. Newt was gathering up his discarded Misfits t-shirt from the floor by his side of the bed. Newt imagined that now was as good a time as any, and said, in the most awkward, obvious attempt to be casual ever, “So what's the deal with that green towel?”

“That?” Hermann froze up so fast, Newt knew he’d hit the bull’s-eye. “Oh, uh…I keep it around, in case anything were to spill in the bathroom that I wouldn't want to clean up with one of our nice white towels.”

“Try again, dude.”

Hermann shifted from foot to foot slightly, then with a sigh, dropped down onto the bed, still clutching his folded-up pajamas. “You already know,” he said, keeping his eyes averted.

“I have a strong suspicion. About two things, actually: the other is that good stuff will go bad and bad stuff will get worse if we try to keep things from each other.”

Acknowledging defeat, Hermann took a deep breath, and kept his eyes on the floor. “I was eleven years old,” he began. “I was in the bath, and when I was...washing myself, I suddenly felt like I...didn't want to stop. But I didn't understand what was happening, so I decided it was best to stop, and I got out of the bathtub, and I was drying myself with the towel, like normal, but then it started to feel very nice again, when I was drying my...between my legs. And then I didn't stop, and I had my first orgasm, just standing there.

“I shared my room with my brother at that time, so I didn't have an opportunity to try ‘it’ out again, until a couple days after that. I was drying myself off after another bath, and I decided I had better do it again, while I had the chance. And then it just became a habit. My entire adolescence in that little house, I had almost no privacy, so every time I had the bathroom to myself for that long, I did it. I didn't want to do it in the bath and get the bathwater dirty, so I always did it into the towel after I was done drying off.

“What I didn't realize was, in all that time, I had grown not just accustomed to that towel, but dependent on it. The first time I had a room of my own, I tried doing it in the...in the normal way, but I couldn't. I mean I couldn't finish. I had to get up and get a towel and then I finished just fine. When I went home for the holidays, I took one of the old towels...and I've had it ever since.”

Newt was floored by this confession, and momentarily caught up in a mental image of Hermann, alone in the bathroom, fervently rubbing his cock with a towel, perhaps leaning over with his free hand on the edge of the counter, his face distorted by his secret, solitary pleasure. The number of times he must have brought himself to orgasm that way, here in their house, and also back in the Shatterdome, and Newt had never suspected.

“I knew that it was not for the best, to embrace the dependency, but at the time it just seemed so unlikely that I would ever have to take another human being into account when it came to those matters.”

This elicited a noise of sympathy from Newt. He sat down next to Hermann on the bed, not knowing where to put his hands. Touching Hermann’s shoulder seemed condescending. Eventually he just kept them to himself for fear of screwing it up. “So you never told me because...? You were embarrassed?”

“I guess that's the word for it. I believed I had broken myself, and I was too ashamed to admit it. At first I thought that you might have seen it in the drift, and were just trying to be nice by not saying anything...”

“No, no, I never knew. Aw, man, I'm so sorry. I kind of treated you like you were broken too, like I just needed to figure out how to fix you, and then everything would be alright.”

Hermann said nothing, which was as good as saying _Yes, that's exactly what you did_.

Newt quickly recovered from his despondency, and said cheerily, “But see, this is great! Now we know you're not broken!”

“We do?”

“Where's the towel?”

“It's in the bottom drawer under the sink.”

“Really? Your deepest, darkest secret, and you keep it 'in the bottom drawer under the sink'?”

“Did you ever go looking for it there?”

“…No.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Okay, fine, whatever. Just stay right there.”

Newt leapt from the bed and darted into the bathroom. He was gone longer than it should take someone to retrieve a towel, and Hermann began to wonder. But then Newt marched proudly back into the room, naked but for the ugly green towel wrapped around his waist. Hermann’s stomach dropped. It was such a bizarre sight – the person that meant the most to him in the world, wearing the very object he for so long had feared would undermine the happiness they'd found together – that he almost forgot to be turned on by it. Almost.

Newt turned three-hundred and sixty degrees, like he was modeling it. “So, what do you want to rub against, the front or the back?” Like they’d already had the drawn-out and awkward discussion that should lead up to a question like that.

Hermann wrung his hands. “Oh, um...I guess, the front?”

“Excellent choice! Now come on, get naked, what are you waiting for, a royal decree?”

Newt knelt on the bed and began tugging ineffectually at articles of clothing that he would not be able to get off of Hermann, at least not until he stood up, or lifted his arms. Hermann batted Newt's hands away and saw to it himself, though Newt managed to return to “help” a little bit. He hardly waited for Hermann to situate himself comfortably on his back on the bed before he was climbing on top. He stayed mindful of Hermann's leg, though, lowering himself carefully and asking, “Is this alright? Is this alright? What about like this?” Finally, Hermann gave Newt permission to drop his weight.

Hermann's towel was soft from years of laundering, a very familiar texture, but now, behind it, was Newt's erection, pressing against his own. Hermann drew a quick hard breath and let it out with a shuddering moan, which he immediately became embarrassed by and tried to stifle. Newt noticed this, and scolded him: “Don't hold it back. Do what feels good, please please please.”

Hermann swallowed hard and nodded. He tilted his pelvis, rubbing against the towel, this time allowing himself a breathy groan. But pushing up was difficult, and Newt could detect when Hermann's noises of pleasure were tinged with discomfort, because he'd moved his leg the wrong way. So he encouraged Hermann to lie still and let him do the work. He lowered himself so he was pressed tightly against Hermann where it counted, and rolled his hips until Hermann was breathless and wanton again. He continued his chant in his head. _Please please please_.

“How's this? Do you think you can come like this?” Hermann was so beautiful, he thought. _Please please please_.

“I...I think I can,” Hermann panted, “yes.”

“Omigod, yes, dude, I can't wait to see your face. This is gonna be so awesome. Come on, show me what an animal you are. You're–”

Hermann squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay _shhh_ darling, you're putting me off now.”

“Sorry. What do you need? Faster? Harder?”

“Faster.”

Newt began to work himself more rapidly over Hermann's throbbing erection, watching intently for every discernible change in Hermann's expression. With each passing second, he couldn't help thinking, _Is it happening now? Is it happening now?_ Because who knew, maybe Hermann wouldn't let loose, maybe he'd just breathe a little harder, and then announce that he had finished. That would be no fun.

But to his delight, it was quite obvious when it actually was happening. Hermann made a strange noise, an odd shriek, unlike anything Newt had ever heard before. His eyes rolled back, and then his back arched, and then his thighs trembled as he let out a joyous cry. He was finally, finally coming. Feeling Hermann shake beneath him made Newt want to press down harder, feel all that quaking even more intensely. Soon, Hermann's ejaculation was soaking through the towel, dampening Newt’s skin. To his surprise, Newt’s whole body erupted in the most glorious orgasm without the aid of a hand or mouth, just in response to Hermann's ecstasy, for which he had waited so long and worked so hard. But the best feeling was the utter relief and lack of guilt when he began to come down, because he knew that Hermann was, for the first time, experiencing that blissful post-orgasmic rush of chemicals with him.

Newt rolled halfway off of Hermann, but could not bear to be any farther away. He giggled into the crook of Hermann's neck, unable to suppress the lasting thrill of what they'd managed to accomplish. But otherwise, they were quiet, focused on basking.

At last, Hermann broke the silence by remarking, “We'll still have to find a way to do without it.”

Newt pulled back just far enough to respond clearly: “Who says we have to? I mean, if you want to, we can try, but there was nothing wrong with that. I could totally live with doing it that way forever.”

“You liar. You get bored halfway through a bowl of cereal.”

“I don't mean _exactly_ that way. There's a hundred ways we could do it with the towel in the mix, is what I'm saying. The only drawback is, we'll probably have to do laundry a lot more. But that's cool, I can do it sometimes. Remember I did the laundry that one time.”

“Yes,” Hermann sighed, “I haven't forgotten that one time you did the laundry. You're very keen on reminding me.”

“I didn't have to be asked or anything, I just did it.”

“Yes. _Shhh_ , now, I want to have a nap.” Hermann closed his eyes as he placed a finger over Newt's lips. “People want to do that after they've come, you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a set of prompts I got from my followers on Tumblr as part of a fic-fest. I mixed up all the prompts and wrote the results. The prompts for this fic were as follows:
> 
> izzybutt: It all starts with the end of a near-cataclysmic event.  
> schnattergans: And then suddenly there’s an old friend from the past.  
> orcinusdorka: There’s a great deal of bubble tea.  
> [And then they have sex.]  
> type40consultingdetective: But the important thing is that the story is very believable.


End file.
